Child Maltreatment and Physical Victimization: Does Heavy Drinking Mediate the Relationship?

Past studies examining the child maltreatment (CM)/victimization pathway have been limited by their focus on sexual victimization, narrow windows of assessment, and failure to examine gender differences. In the current study, we sought to examine (1) the impact of CM on physical victimization (PV) trajectories from adolescence to young adulthood and (2) the extent to which heavy drinking mediated the relationship between CM and later PV. Using three waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we found that CM was associated with a 69% greater odds of later PV for both genders, after the inclusion of control variables, and that the risk continued into adulthood. Further, heavy drinking was found to mediate the CM/victimization pathway at Wave I, but not at later waves. When mediation was examined separately for men and women, support for mediation was found for men and women. The current study suggests that CM represents a liability for interpersonal violence for both genders and highlights the importance of looking at victimization across time.